Warner Bros. debuted the (very good) first trailer for Matt Reeves’ The Batman over the weekend during the virtual DC FanDome event, which gave news outlets all kinds of fun things to write about—like our first look at James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (you can tell all these movies are different from the other DC movies because they have “The” in the title) and whatever the hell is going on with Colin Farrell’s Penguin in The Batman (he looks like Tom Wilkinson?). Something that apparently everyone failed to mention during The Batman portion of the event was the late casting addition of Barry Keoghan. As revealed in a press release sent out after the event and obtained by /Film, Keoghan has signed on to play a motherfuckin’ cop in The Batman—specifically Officer Stanley Merkel, a character who appeared in the comic book Batman: Year Two as Commissioner James Gordon’s first partner. It’s unclear if Keoghan’s Merkel will be included in flashbacks or if the character has been refashioned for the new film, which features Jeffrey Wright as Gordon.
Keoghan is best known for his roles in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (which also starred Farrell) and American Animals, and has a couple of highly-anticipated films on deck that were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic: Marvel’s The Eternals and A24's The Green Knight, directed by David Lowery. Like The Batman’s Robert Pattinson, Keoghan is also a Christopher Nolan boy, having previously appeared in Dunkirk (that’s the one about war). The Batman, which also stars Zoe Kravitz and Paul Dano, is currently scheduled for release on October 1, 2021.
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Well he certainly doesn’t look like vengeance, now does he.
He looks like Ezra Miller and Logan Lerman’s love child.
He looks like a Team America-style puppet of Joseph Gordon-Levitt
As a massive fan of The Killing a Scared Deer, I’m immensely excited at the reunion of Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan.
Also Batman is okay I guess. But seriously, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer was such a great and surreal movie.
He was… unnerving in Killing Of A Sacred Deer. Mind you, so was everyone.
He definitely has a really creepy looking face. He’s also a great actor though.
That spaghetti scene alone was a spectacular acting moment. Great movie indeed.
I wonder if he’s gonna be in Gotham PD, and if so, it could be one of the reasons he dropped out of Y: The Last Man.
Based on Matt Reeve’s description of the show that is where my mind went as well. Barry Keoghan definitely fits the profile of an HBO series lead.
That’s what I was thinking. At least the first part.
Hmm. I wonder if that means he’ll be in the GCPD show. That’s why he’s in at what seems the last minute.
Stan? Stan, you look really pretty tonight.
The year is 2140. Earth’s resources have been dried up to make more Batman movies. A new Batman movie is released every four days. 17% of the earth’s population has played Batman in a film. The Martian off-world colonies are dedicated to pumping out adaptations of The Killing JokeThose few brave souls in The Resistance who believe “there are maybe enough Batman movies for now” are hunted down and terminated on sight.
I think the scariest thing a character can do in a movie is eat plain spaghetti with tomato sauce. Keoghan in Sacred Deer and Gummo, giant NOPE.